I was reading an article this morning with the results of a British study on friendship, which say that women are twice as good at men at maintaining lifelong friendships. In fact, a third of British women said they met their current best friend when they were still in school. Of course with the rise of Facebook, everyone is pretty much now in contact with every person they’ve ever met since they were in diapers, but leaving aside social media friendship, I wonder how many of you are still friends with the people you grew up with.

Although I definitely keep in touch with a few very old friends sporadically via the Internet, most of the girls I’m truly friends with today I met post-college. However, one of my closest friends is actually one of my oldest friends too! Oldest in terms of how long we’ve known each other, not her actual age. Because she’s my age, and I am still very young. (OMG no I’m not, I found a gray hair this weekend and I hate being 30!)

Prost! (Which is how you say cheers when you're wearing a dirndl.)

This is me and Meghan. We met in the fourth grade, and promptly thereafter got into a fight playing kickball at recess. Seriously, she sort of strangled me, and it’s become our lifelong joke about how we met. We quickly made peace though, and we’ve been friends ever since.

Even though we haven’t lived in the same place since our senior year of high school, I’ve visited her in all the various places she’s lived: Indiana, Texas, even Austria (hence our outfits above), and earlier this month, I helped her move out to Los Angeles. And if it sounds like I’m doing all the work here, she visited me about five times more often than that when I was living in New York. Once, she even flew out to the city that day on a spur of the moment trip when I got free Yankees tickets! You’re the best, Meghan!

Of course, my newer friends mean the world to me too, and friendship is about quality, not just quantity of years. But there’s something so special about the friends who have known you since you were a kid and still manage to like you, right?

Who’s your oldest friend? How long have you been friends with her? (Or him?) Do your closest friends tend to be people you've known since childhood, or friends you made as an adult?